Description du projet
Des rubans chauffants pour faire fondre la neige sur la route
Brouillard. Couverture de glace. Chaussée gelée. Neige tourbillonnante. Il ne s’agit là que de quelques-unes des conditions hivernales responsables de retards de circulation et d’accidents. Les solutions actuelles consistent à déneiger et à saler les chaussées, mais les temps de réponse de ces mesures sont trop longs, en plus d’endommager les surfaces de circulation, de corroder les véhicules et d’avoir un impact négatif sur l’environnement. Le projet Snowless, financé par l’UE, propose une solution pour faire fondre la neige. Il utilise des rubans chauffants en alliage amorphe qui sont intégrés dans les chaussées et une unité de contrôle entièrement automatique offrant une réponse dynamique en temps réel. Des zones de chauffage segmentées garantissent une réponse en temps réel (15 minutes à partir de la détection automatique de la neige ou de la glace), des coûts opérationnels annuels peu élevés et une maintenance quasi nulle. La solution Snowless est également écologique, prévient la fissuration de l’asphalte, réduit l’amplitude de la température et favorise l’autoréparation de l’asphalte.
Objectif
Winter conditions on roads cause traffic delays that cost 1% of EU GDP and 1,000 causalities annually. Similarly, snow fall causes air traffic disturbance that can cost €57.3M per storm. For pedestrians it a major health issue as an increase of 25% increase in hospitalization and 33% rise in cases of hip fractures is observed during winter season. Current solutions suffer from many shortcomings. The most popular, plowing and salting, is manual, has low response times, damages traffic surfaces, vehicle corrosion and environment pollution. To answer this need we have developed SNOWLESS, a snow melting solution comprising of our proprietary amorphous alloy heating ribbons that are embedded in pavements and completely automatic control unit with real-time dynamic response. Our prioritization scheme for segmented heating zones ensures real-time response (15 minutes from automatic snow/ice detection), low annual operational costs of €1.2/m2 almost no maintenance, 30-60% reduction power consumption. Our solution is environmentally friendly, prevents asphalt cracking by reducing the temperature amplitude and promotes self-healing in the asphalt itself. Our commercialization targets Scandinavia, Central Europe and North America, a market worth €1.75B for shopping malls, roads, pedestrian walkways and airports driven by demand for sustainable snow removal alternative. SNOWLESS has already been implemented in parking lots, successfully reducing operational costs, with the installations generating €1.5M in sales over the last 3 years. We intend commercialize SNOWLESS 3 years after development, ideally by 2021 in 2 phases, with initial introduction to shopping mall parkings which have less stringent requirements and then progress to difficult applications such airports and road infrastructure. We anticipate a revenue and profit of €50M and €15M respectively coming from sales over 5 years, creating 21 employment opportunities in the process.
Champ scientifique
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringcontrol systems
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsrenewable energy
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcoating and films
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementemployment
- natural sciencesmathematicsapplied mathematicsmathematical model
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
IA - Innovation actionCoordinateur
Haifa
Israël
L’entreprise s’est définie comme une PME (petite et moyenne entreprise) au moment de la signature de la convention de subvention.